“This, Yva; it is ours, who can count on nothing else.”

“Oh!  Humphrey, if I thought that, no more wretched creature would breathe tonight upon this great world.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, growing fearful, more at her manner and her look than at her words.

“Nothing, nothing, except that Time is so very short.  A kiss, a touch, a little light and a little darkness, and it is gone.  Ask my father Oro who has lived a thousand years and slept for tens of thousands, as I have, and he will say the same.  It is against Time that he fights; he who, believing in nothing beyond, will inherit nothing, as Bastin says; he to whom Time has brought nothing save a passing, blood-stained greatness, and triumph ending in darkness and disaster, and hope that will surely suffer hope’s eclipse, and power that must lay down its coronet in dust.”

“And what has it brought to you, Yva, beyond a fair body and a soul of strength?”

“It has brought a spirit, Humphrey.  Between them the body and the soul have bred a spirit, and in the fires of tribulation from that spirit has been distilled the essence of eternal love.  That is Time’s gift to me, and therefore, although still he rules me here, I mock at Fate,” and she waved her hand with a gesture of defiance at the stern-faced, sexless effigy which sat above us, the sword across its knees.

“Look!  Look!” she went on in a swelling voice of music, pointing to the statues of the dotard and the beauteous woman.  “They implore Fate, they worship Fate.  I do not implore, I do not worship or ask a sign as even Oro does and as did his forefathers.  I rise above and triumph.  As Fate, the god of my people, sets his foot upon the sun, so I set my foot upon Fate, and thence, like a swimmer from a rock, leap into the waters of Immortality.”

I looked at her whose presence, as happened from time to time, had grown majestic beyond that of woman; I studied her deep eyes which were full of lights, not of this world, and I grew afraid.

“What do you mean?” I asked.  “Yva, you talk like one who has finished with life.”

“It passes,” she answered quickly.  “Life passes like breath fading from a mirror.  So should all talk who breathe beneath the sun.”

“Yes, Yva, but if you went and left me still breathing on that mocking glass—­”

“If so, what of it?  Will not your breath fade also and join mine where all vapours go?  Or if it were yours that faded and mine that remained for some few hours, is it not the same?  I think, Humphrey, that already you have seen a beloved breath melt from the glass of life,” she added, looking at me earnestly.

I bowed my head and answered: 

“Yes, and therefore I am ashamed.”

“Oh! why should you be ashamed, Humphrey, who are not sure but that two breaths may yet be one breath?  How do you know that there is a difference between them?”

“You drive me mad, Yva.  I cannot understand.”